Trying to do a complete Nihilist runthrough.

[Hackie P4ckie]

The gist is just that I've gotta play the game with no kills, no detections (doesn't count raising suspicions), no tools (I can't use anything from my inventory), no augs, hard difficulty (cause apparently hard is harder than realistic. Also it doesn't change stealth difficulty so there's basically no reason to even worry about difficulty) and no KNOCKOUTS (which seems like it might make the game genuinely impossible, but we'll see). I'm allowed to use glitches (and I intend to) so there are a few situations that might be skippable.

That's about it, methinks. I've tried this kind of run for a few others games, but these are games that are usually a lot easier to play, and a lot more recent. HITMAN 2016, Dishonored 1 & 2, Deus Ex: HR and MD. The original Deus Ex obviously has some restrictions.

Firstly, the Anna Navarre fight. During a regular runthrough, you'd have to fight her at some point, and you've gotta kill her, which nullifies the 'no kills' rule. Also, she spots you pretty damn sharpish so I don't know if there's any way to initiate her fight without actually being spotted. You can't knock her out, either. I managed to find a way past her before, but obviously it's gonna require augs.

There was another solution that required you to block off every exit around her using boxes and then drop a grenade next to her, but obviously, that's gonna require a grenade, which'll void the 'no tools' rule.

Beyond Anna Navarre, there's also Gunther, who's going to think I killed Anna anyway, so he'll be waiting for me in Paris and trying to kill me. I don't think there's any way to avoid his confrontation, cause he attacks you as soon as you enter the room. Using his killphrase would prevent him from breaking the 'no detections' rule, but then you've broken the 'no kills' rule. If you choose not to use the phrase, then he detects you anyway.

I can't think of any other situations that might be impossible to pull through with these rules.

No kills is self-explanatory. I just can't kill anyone during the game. A kill counts as anyone who's dead who wouldn't have been if you hadn't have intervened. Like, the gas valve explosion in the Hong Kong Helibase, or if anyone's blown up during the bilge pump destruction on the Wall Cloud ship.

No detections is a little bit iffy. Basically play through the whole game without being seen, but in some situations, alarms or combat can still be initiated even if you're not seen. No alarms is a requirement, obviously, but there are still situations where being seen is inevitable, like the second escape from New York (the one after you meet with Dowd and the UNATCO boys show up to find you). I'd say that triggering combat music counts as being seen, but I'm pretty sure that's inevitable as well. I'm still iffy on what exactly counts as 'seen'. Also, animals like Greasels and Karkians can't 'see' you, and don't count as kills. More because Greasels are repulsive ♥♥♥♥ers and freak me the ♥♥♥♥ out. Of course, not like I can kill them anyway since I don't have any tools. Beyond throwing TNT crates at people, there's basically no way to actually kill anyone.

No tools basically means I can't use any items at all. No lockpicks, multitools, weapons, thermoptic camo. I would so love for this rule to retract just far enough for me to use soda cans and bags of soy food, because throwing them actually works nicely as a distraction. Obviously, not being able to use any items will lock off a lot of paths. I can still use world objects, like TNT crates and such. They're technically not part of your inventory, so you have to carry them around manually.

No augs is also pretty self-explanatory. Just don't use any augmentations throughout the whole game. A few sections will be pretty hard due to this. Like the escape from the NSF hideout once you enable the distress signal for Silhoutte in New York. That's about four floors of UNATCO boys that I can't really avoid now. My usual solution would be to jump right over the edge with the leg augmentation.

The difficulty rule really doesn't even matter. Apparently realistic difficulty makes both you and the enemies take a realistic amount of damage, so we'll both die in a hit or two. Hard difficulty means the enemies will just deal more damage than I do, so I'm at more of a disadvantage. I guess it'll only come into any use in the very few Greasel fights there are in the game.

No knockouts seems like one of the harder rules. Lots of enemies are just flat-out stuck in place, watching over important areas and refusing to move. The ability to knock people out is basically your only offensive capability throughout the whole game, but without it, you'll be kinda stuck.

As per usual, the rules will probably be updated a little if they're impossible to do, but not without making sure that they're actually completely impossible first.

This doesn't seem like the game for it, but has anyone tried anything like this before, or have any tricks or exploits?

EDIT: OH YEAH, No skills either. You can't train any of your skills up, which means no swimming mastery. What a shame.

[Francisè von Spitroast]

No swimming mastery? Might as well give up now.

A trick/exploit you might not know is that if you save you sort of jump forward a bit in movement so you can use this very easily to bypass lasers without really doing anything.

[Hackie P4ckie]

Originally posted by Dazed and Confused:

No swimming mastery? Might as well give up now.

A trick/exploit you might not know is that if you save you sort of jump forward a bit in movement so you can use this very easily to bypass lasers without really doing anything.

Heh, that actually works. I wanna try gettin' to a set of lasers to see if I can replicate it.

Also, the first mission is actually real ♥♥♥♥♥♥' easy with these rules. Don't know how well the others will hold up.

[Francisè von Spitroast]

Originally posted by Grizzly:

Originally posted by Dazed and Confused:

No swimming mastery? Might as well give up now.

A trick/exploit you might not know is that if you save you sort of jump forward a bit in movement so you can use this very easily to bypass lasers without really doing anything.

Heh, that actually works. I wanna try gettin' to a set of lasers to see if I can replicate it.

Also, the first mission is actually real ♥♥♥♥♥♥' easy with these rules. Don't know how well the others will hold up.

Good luck on Area 51 if you get that far. That's going to be hell.

[talgaby]

So, a no items/augs run with ghost rules? If you excluded glitches, it would be interesting. With those, you can clip through any wall any time you want, so it kinda defeats the challenge.
Granted, without clipping, you would fail the ghosting, as you cannot do anything about the ambush in the silo and at the A51 elevator.

[Hackie P4ckie]

Without glitches it would just be flat out impossible. You need a certain bit of leniency to actually complete it. I usually just take a look to see if there are any really obvious snags, and obviously there's no way past Anna Navarre without breaking some of the rules.

Although I've still got Howard Strong to deal with now who should be interesting anyway. Honestly got no idea how to get past him, and I'm almost at his mission now, so. Short of just finding a way to skip the whole mission, I've no idea.

Also how do you clip through any wall you want? I've got LAM clipping nailed down and stuff like that, but I can't use LAMs now with the no items rule in place. I don't know if there are any other ways about it.

[tacogao]

ok

[talgaby]

You can use any small prop to clip through walls. I wish I could find the video explaining it.

[Hackie P4ckie]

Originally posted by talgaby:

You can use any small prop to clip through walls. I wish I could find the video explaining it.

I remember how to do that in Human Revolution, but I don't know if there's any way to do it in DX1.

EDIT: If you do actually remember a way to clip like that pls tell cause it'd be PRETTY ♥♥♥♥♥♥' useful right now for the Vandenberg Gas Station. I'm trying to get Tiffany past 5 guards using only 3 boxes to block the guards in, and there's two more boxes stuck behind a wall in the shed next to Jock.

[talgaby]

You cannot do that segment in your current rules without causing her death. That stupid fence and the "blast doors" are too thick to clip through, they are not the usual single-pixel wide walls. At least I never managed it nor seen any speedrunners pull it off; they just kill Tiffany fast and go to Jock.

[Hackie P4ckie]

Originally posted by talgaby:

You cannot do that segment in your current rules without causing her death. That stupid fence and the "blast doors" are too thick to clip through, they are not the usual single-pixel wide walls. At least I never managed it nor seen any speedrunners pull it off; they just kill Tiffany fast and go to Jock.

ehh, I wouldn't be so sure.

I DID manage to get through it, although it's hard as ♥♥♥♥, and basically just RNG. It also takes a LOT of quicksaving and quickloading, and about four hours of your time to set it all up.

You gotta go and collect every single box on the map, for starters. Already tedious enough. Then, you gotta introduce yourself to the five guards who are gonna make your life a living hell.

FIRSTLY, you got the commando who patrols around the blast doors. THIS guy is fun. He can't hear any sounds from you, so you can pull this off with enough patience. You gotta surround him with metal boxes (all five that you can find on the map), and then use the wooden ones as a way to hide from him. Then, you gotta slowly inch each box forwards, more and more, until eventually you push him towards the ledge of the gas station. Then, he'll start to clip around on the ledge. Do a save, then quickload, and if you do it right, he'll just appear right at the bottom of the slope, with no way back up to the gas station. If this guy's still even on the gas station plateau, then Tiffany won't be able to reach the doors. Her AI's just too finicky to run to the doors while this guy's around.

THEN, you gotta deal with the two guys in the garage. Now, they're a lil harder, and where the RNG comes from. You've got the MJ12 troop who's sitting down, and the MIB who's patrolling. You gotta push four wooden boxes into the room and navigate over towards the MJ12 guy with them. Try to push one stack of the boxes in front of his chair to block his line of sight on the MIB. He might stand up and investigate if you push the boxes too close to him, so just do it enough to block his line of sight.

THEN, push all the metal boxes into place when the MIB turns around. You need to make a small circle of them to hold him into the corner. Now this guy's the hardest to deal with, because he can still hear you, and you've gotta make a lot of noise while moving all the boxes around him. Once you've got the metal boxes in place, you've gotta put some wooden boxes on top of them as well. All this does is create a big blind spot when Tiffany starts running past.

Now, since he's using a plasma rifle, I think his AI is running a little check whenever he tries to fire. If he's about to fire, but there's something in front of him, he'll turn around and try to move somewhere where he'll be able to hit his target. BUT, of course, since he's locked into a corner he can't move anywhere, so every time he targets Tiffany, he'll turn away from her to run.

Then, the other MJ12 guy in here can be dealt with using 1 metal box. He's just watching the alarm immediately in front of him, and won't even shoot Tiffany if the alarm hasn't been set off. If you drop just 1 metal box in front of the alarm, in JUST the right place, he won't be able to ring the alarm, and he'll keep running around the box trying to find a path to it (HINT: He won't)

THEN, you've got the guard in the yard behind the garage. Once Tiffany starts running, this guy's just omniscient, and he'll come running in to find her. Just drop one more metal box in front of the door of the yard fence. This'll stop this guy from even running out of the yard, now, meaning Tiffany's still safe.

NEXT, you gotta just hope to god that the MJ12 commando who's patrolling immediately outside the garage isn't patrolling towards you. If he is, you gotta reload and wait a bit.

This is after you tell Tiffany to run, though. When you tell her to run, you've gotta sneak all the way around back, then onto the roof of the garage. Then drop onto the roof of her cell and use the hatch to get into it.

BUT, you'll make too much noise landing in her cell, so you've gotta glitch in there using savejumping. Just save at the EXACT right moment before you hit the ground in her cell, reload, and you'll lose all your momentum, so you won't make a load of noise hitting the ground.

Now that you're in her cell, you've gotta tell her to run, and then let the RNG begin. Her AI is just far too ♥♥♥♥ to actually run in a straight line, so Tiffany's gonna keep running around the garage, back to her cell, and basically everywhere but the actual door. She kept this up for almost half an hour when I did it, while the MIB targeted and shot her through tiny gaps in the big wooden wall I'd built around him. If he does manage to target Tiffany, the flames from the plasma rifle will break all the boxes, meaning he'll be able to target her even easier. Might as well just restart then.

BUT, if you do manage to make her walk out the door, AND the MJ12 commando on patrol there isn't watching, then there should be nobody in her way anymore, and she'll run straight to Jock.

And that's all without breaking any of the rules, at all.

I could write a ♥♥♥♥♥♥' thesis on this by now.

[talgaby]

By now, yes. :)

[Alexhandr]

Interesting, but why is it called "Nihilist" playthrough? Doesn't seem nihilistic.

[Hackie P4ckie]

Originally posted by Alexhandr:

Interesting, but why is it called "Nihilist" playthrough? Doesn't seem nihilistic.

Taking it from all the other people who've done 'nihilist' runs. A lot of people have followed that whole naming convention for a while now but I don't think anyone really knows why.

Generally nihilism is about the absence of any meaning, but I guess they've probably just stretched it "absence of stuff", like kills, knockouts, alerts and such.

tl;dr i'm just the messenger

[Sexy Sadie]

Pretty much what people call a ghost run for other games. I'll try soon, see if I can finish this game that way.

[Hackie P4ckie]

Originally posted by Sexy Sadie:

Pretty much what people call a ghost run for other games. I'll try soon, see if I can finish this game that way.

I've made it all the way to Howard Strong but I haven't actually tried to get past him yet. Don't know if he's possible yet.